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Music; To Regain Glory, The New Michael Imitates the Old

WHICH kind of weirdo is more unsavory: the one who rants about the way the world is out to get him, or the one who won't stop trying to cozy up to women and children? That's the choice offered by Michael Jackson's ''Invincible,'' his first full-length album since he attached a disc of new material to his 1995 greatest-hits collection, ''HIStory.''

Between albums, pop has given him a cruel tribute. The teenypop that was once his domain has been revitalized and taken over by acts like 'N Sync, who owe him nearly everything. Along with the other boy bands, not to mention Britney Spears, 'N Sync and its brain trust of producers and songwriters have reached a new generation of squealing girls with untortured, sweetly romantic, precisely choreographed variants of Mr. Jackson's music from the 1980's. Surrounded by echoes of the Jackson 5 and his old albums, Mr. Jackson just might want his audience back.

''Invincible'' (Epic EK 069400) has clearly been worked over and then some. Its release was once planned for November 1999, and it reportedly cost $30 million, while a dozen producers and songwriters signed on, made songs and had them shelved. As he has been trying to do in all the sequels to his 1982 album, ''Thriller'' (which became the best-selling album of all time until an Eagles greatest-hits collection recently edged it out), Mr. Jackson once again strives to reconstruct the pop album as both self-expression and something for the whole world to buy. Too much self-expression has been risky, though. When Mr. Jackson really started howling about his troubles on the second ''HIStory'' disc, and on a handful of new songs on the ''Blood on the Dance Floor'' remix album in 1997, fans backed off. Morbid curiosity was no substitute for affection.

On ''Invincible,'' Mr. Jackson applies obsessive craftsmanship to the music as he zeroes in on one demographic quarry after another: dancers, rockers, the ladies, the children. But there's a barrier to the sense of identification that makes people hear themselves in pop songs. The obstacle is something he has devoted most of his life to building: his fame. One of Mr. Jackson's imitators might sound sensual delivering the heavy-breathing come-ons of ''Break of Dawn,'' but the man himself, with all his quirks, comes across like a stalker.

With all the resources of multinational corporate marketing, Mr. Jackson has constructed a public image that contradicts his gentle, humanistic public statements. The way Mr. Jackson's songs and videos have told it, achieving the American show-business dream -- celebrity, commercial success, autonomy, influence -- has made him both miserable and messianic. In his songs he is insecure, lonely and vulnerable, all ready to be rescued, but he also harbors an inner monster. He wants to spread love and healing and hints at having divine powers. But cross him even slightly and he'll turn vindictive.

His videos show wild megalomania -- like the skyscraper-size statue of himself in the one for ''History'' -- and a long trail of damage and explosions. And someone whose career was made by his skill at turning himself into a multimedia product now can't stop complaining about how much he suffers from media attention. Intolerance, poverty, disease and war don't get him as worked up as overeager paparazzi. (On ''Invincible,'' he sounds furious in ''Privacy,'' which alludes to the death of Princess Diana on Aug. 31, 1997; the song calls it ''a cold winter night.'')

The new album tries to make Mr. Jackson approachable again. The main strategy is to trot out gambits that worked in decades past. ''You Rock My World,'' the first single from ''Invincible,'' harks back to the disco strings he used on ''Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough.'' Dialogue in the extended video clip quotes past Jackson song titles, while the action is a hybrid of ''Smooth Criminal'' and ''Beat It,'' though with the destructive streak of Mr. Jackson's later videos. By the time he has danced his way out of trouble one more time, a city block is in flames.

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''Invincible,'' like ''Thriller,'' features a song about a monster, ''Threatened,'' although this time Mr. Jackson makes himself the ghoul. (The celebrity voice comes from Rod Serling, whose ''Twilight Zone'' narrations are edited into a rap.) It also has such Jackson staples as the she-done-me-wrong song (''Heartbreaker''), the change-the-world song (''Cry''), the melting love ballads (''Break of Dawn,'' ''Don't Walk Away'' and ''Butterflies'') and the save-the-children song (''The Lost Children,'' complete with children's chorus).

But Mr. Jackson just doesn't have it in him to be as innocuous as his imitators. A more inviting ballad, ''Heaven Can Wait,'' turns out to be a declaration that if he dies before his lover does, he's staying on Earth so she won't be with anyone else. ''Whatever Happens'' is more promisingly mysterious: a ballad featuring Carlos Santana on guitar, women singing ''sha-na-na-na'' and the kind of whistling heard on old Ennio Morricone soundtracks, it barely explains what's happening to its troubled couple. And ''Cry,'' written by R. Kelly (who also wrote ''You Are Not Alone'' on ''HIStory''), applies its grand buildup to one of pop's strangest utopian schemes: asking everyone to cry at the same time, at which point the singer may ''answer all your prayers.''

There's a skillful musician at work in the album's multitracked marvels. Mr. Jackson's voice has increasingly pushed toward extreme contrasts. One side is the ultra-smoothie, the ballad singer whose long lines and creamy overdubbed choruses sail weightlessly above sparse percussion in ''Butterflies,'' full orchestra in ''Don't Walk Away'' and all by itself in ''Speechless,'' which may be a love song to God.

His other voice is the staccato Mr. Jackson, the percussive genius who oversees startling rhythm tracks and breaks up his singing with grunts and breaths and yelps. He chants the generic complaints of ''Heartbreaker,'' a collaboration with the producer Rodney Jerkins and others, against a rhythm track of electronic noises that ratchet and sputter like a truckload of joy buzzers on a rough road. But other uptempo tracks sound stale and airless.

A near-miss, ''Unbreakable,'' could do more with its terse little piano riff, and it tosses in a completely tangential rap from the archives of the Notorious B.I.G., apparently simply because Mr. Jackson can afford it. The song lyrics are the same kinds of defiant assertions that 'N Sync makes in ''Pop'' and the Backstreet Boys make in ''Everyone'': ''No matter what you do, I'm still gonna be here,'' Mr. Jackson squeezes out through gritted teeth.

But like the rest of ''Invincible,'' there's no joy or humor in it, no sense of release. Trying to make songs that will blanket the media universe again, pop that lives up to his past fame, Mr. Jackson is unwilling to get too personal but unable to escape his scars and ambitions. Pop is a promise of pleasure, but on ''Invincible,'' he's so busy trying to dazzle listeners that he forgets to have any fun.

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A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2001, on Page 2002029 of the National edition with the headline: Music; To Regain Glory, The New Michael Imitates the Old. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe